Jewish Context Research Articles

PALEO-HEBREW SCRIPT IN JERUSALEM AND JUDEA FROM THE SECOND CENTURY B.C.E. THROUGH THE SECOND CENTURY C.E.: A RECONSIDERATION

The article focuses on the use of the Paleo-Hebrew script versus the square script (known also as “Jewish script” or “Assyrian”) by the Jews of Judea during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. From the Persian period until the Bar Kokhba Rebellion, Paleo-Hebrew script was used in various Jewish contexts (official, sacred, funerary) and on a variety of substrates (parchment, stone, coins, and pottery). The most representative artefacts bearing inscriptions in the Paleo-Hebrew script are Jewish coins of that time and the Dead Sea Scrolls. One common view is that because the Hasmoneans and the rebels in both revolts sought to establish their sovereignty, they employed symbols of Jewish significance and the archaic and obsolete – but prestigious – Paleo-Hebrew script, which was a reminder of the glorious past. Studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls commonly premise that greater holiness and value was attached to the Paleo-Hebrew script than to the square script. The article shows that, in the Second Temple period, the square script was considered holy. Consequently, those who were scrupulous about observing the laws of ritual purity refrained from using the square script for mundane purposes and used the Paleo-Hebrew script instead.

Not over Moses’ Dead Body: Jude 9, 22-24 and theAssumption of Mosesin their Early Jewish Context

Jude 9 refers to a story in which the archangel Michael disputes with the devil about the body of Moses. Although the story cited by Jude has not been preserved, the literature of early Judaism contains several traditions that can inform one’s understanding of Jude’s source. This article explores these traditions, especially early Jewish interpretations of Zech. 3, in an effort to throw light on this story and its use in the epistle of Jude. These traditions suggest that the disagreement between Michael and the devil over Moses’ body pertained not to the burial of Moses’ corpse, as previous scholarship has assumed, but to Moses’ bodily ascent into God’s presence. In this ascent account, the devil would have opposed Michael on the grounds that Moses’ fleshly, human body was inadequate for God’s presence. Further, it is probable that Jude 22-24 alludes to the same ascent story.

Into the World of the New Testament: Greco-Roman and Jewish Texts and Contexts. By Daniel Lynwood Smith

Into the World of the New Testament: Greco-Roman and Jewish Texts and Contexts. By Daniel Lynwood Smith

Aristotle and Hippocrates in the Book of Jubilees

This article explores undetected Greco-Roman backgrounds to three texts in Jubilees: the map of the world (8:10-12, 29-30), the introduction of Jacob and Esau (19:13-15), and Esau’s speech and its aftermath (37:18-38:3). The presence of Greco-Roman physiognomy and ethnography in these texts yields insight into the author’s purpose for including Esau’s otherwise unattested speech, his changes to the base text of the Jacob and Esau narratives, and the function of the map of the world. External to the text proper, the results are significant for uncovering the author’s understanding of the Judeans and Idumeans in his own time and is suggestive for the debate concerning whether Jubilees is polemicizing within a sectarian Jewish context or against external powers. These backgrounds are also significant in the broader discourse concerning how the author of Jubilees, among other late-Second Temple Jewish authors, navigates his relationship with contemporary Hellenistic frameworks.

Outlandish names on the provincial doors: German Jews in Victorian Bradford and their expression of identities

This paper seeks to integrate the study of the German Jewish minority in the Victorian north of England, Yorkshire in particular, within the wider context of Victorian history and Jewish and migration studies. Its aim is to contribute to English-Jewish social and cultural history by uncovering the complex relationship between German Jewish and Victorian communities in the provinces and how these affected national and religious identity formation in the modern period. The essay analyses international political and social engagements of German Jews in Bradford and the impact of those engagements on their identity. It selectively looks at two prominent German Jewish figures: Jacob Behrens (1806–1889) and Jacob Moser (1839–1922).

Jesus and the Temple: The Crucifixion in its Jewish Context. By Simon J. Joseph

Jesus and the Temple: The Crucifixion in its Jewish Context. By Simon J. Joseph

Sacred Practices and Family Processes in a Jewish Context: Shabbat as the Weekly Family Ritual Par Excellence.

The present article provides a deep and more focused look at the utility, meaning, processes, and power involved in a specific, family-level, sacred practice or ritual from Judaism: Shabbat (Sabbath). Content analysis of in-depth interviews with 30 diverse, marriage-based Jewish families living in the United States (N=77 individuals) yielded three emergent themes: (a) "Shabbat brings us closer together"; (b) How Shabbat brings the family together; and (c) The Power of Blessing the Children. These themes will be discussed respectively, along with related verbatim data from participants' in-depth qualitative interviews.

Resplendence of al-Andalus

Abstract This contribution presents preliminary results of the research project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe (2014–2018), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and based at the University of Zurich. By focusing on the appropriation of Hispano-Islamic architecture and ornaments in Christian and Jewish contexts, the seven sub-chapters examine the underlying exchange and transfer processes in the Middle Ages and the Modern period, in relation to the complex and multi-faceted phenomena of cross-cultural appropriation and hybridization, as well as the current debates on otherness and national identity.

The Immense House of Postcards

The subject of tradition engaged both Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida in many of their writings, which explore both the philosophical and cultural significance of tradition and the particular significance of the latter in a specifically Jewish context. Lévinas devoted a few of his Talmudic essays to the subject, and Derrida addressed the issue from the perspective of different philosophical and religious traditions. This article uses the writings of these two thinkers to propose a new way of thinking about the idea of tradition. At the core of its inquiry lie the paradigm of the letter and the use of this metaphor as a means of describing the concept of tradition. Using the phenomenon of the letter as a vantage point for considering tradition raises important points of discussion, due to both the letter’s nature as a text that is sent and the manifest and hidden elements it contains. The focus of this essay is the phenomenon of textual tradition, which encompasses different traditions of reading and interpreting texts and a grasp of the horizon of understanding opened up in relation to the text through its many different interpretations. The attention paid here to the actions of individuals serves to highlight the importance of the interpersonal realm and of ethical thought.

Do Jews and Arabs Differ in Their Fear of Terrorism and Crime?

The current study was carried out with the aim of supplementing the existing literature and broadening the understanding of the determinants of two powerful types of fear, fear of terrorism and fear of crime, by comparing their presence among Jews and Arabs in Israel. Based on an overview of factors influencing fear of victimization, the study focused on individual variables (ethnicity, sex, age, objective, and subjective exposure) as well as on neighborhood disorder and social integration. The sample consisted of 375 Israeli students (191 Jews and 184 Arabs). Predictions of fear of terrorism and crime were conducted with two multiple regressions. Fear of terrorism was significantly predicted by gender (women more than men), higher self exposure to terror, and higher neighborhood disorder. The only interaction found with regard to exposure to incidents showed that previous victimization predicts only fear of terrorism and only among Arabs who were themselves affected or exposed to the victimization of others. Fear of crime was predicted by sector (Jews more than Arabs), gender (women more than men), higher neighborhood disorder, and lower social integration. As far as known, this is the first attempt to examine differences between Jews and Arabs with regard to these two types of fear and to predict their causes. The findings help gain a better understanding as to how people perceive the threat of crime and terrorism, in general and in the Arab-Jewish context in particular. The findings also enable an understanding of the complexity of living under ongoing terrorism threats. The results are discussed in accordance with the literature, concluding with the need for further research that will take into account the wider cultural and social context.

The Septuagint as Canon

The term “Septuagint” refers to a lengthy process by which individual books of the Hebrew Bible were translated into Greek, together with the inclusion of a few books originally composed in Greek. It only took on the form of a more or less fixed corpus much later. In the same way, this collection of books in Greek acquired authoritative status for its users over a period of time; notions of formal or institutional canonicity came only at a considerably later date, and in a Christian rather than a Jewish context. This article summarizes the processes by which the Greek translation was made and traces the way in which this corpus gradually acquired authoritative and then canonical status. Some practical implications for Bible Societies’ translation policies are also presented.

Book Review: Why Did Jesus Die?: Simon J. Joseph. Jesus and the Temple: The Crucifixion in its Jewish Context

Book Review: Why Did Jesus Die?: Simon J. Joseph. <i>Jesus and the Temple: The Crucifixion in its Jewish Context</i>

What light does Matthew’s use of Mark in Matthew 1–4 throw on Matthew’s theological location?

This article approaches the issue of Matthew’s theological context by examining Matthew’s use of Mark, including through redaction and supplementation, in Matthew 1–4. This is undertaken in two parts: Matthew 1–2, which is largely additional material, and Matthew 3–4, followed by a concluding assessment. Issues addressed or alluded to in these chapters frequently find resonance in the remainder of Matthew’s gospel and so give important clues about Matthew’s concerns and their relevance for understanding its context. Such issues include the importance of messiahship; continuity with Israel, but also with John the Baptist and the Church; defence against slander; heightened christological claims; soteriology; Gentile mission; the status of Torah; and Jesus as judge to come. The article suggests a location within a Jewish religious context with a Jewish self-understanding, separate from the synagogue, but claiming to belong where its opponents would claim it did not; and a Christian tradition where the approach of ‘Q’ to Torah is upheld in contrast to Mark’s, while embracing and expanding Mark’s Christology and restoring the common understanding of Gentile mission as a post- Easter phenomenon.

Gregory of Nyssa's Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts. By Ann Conway-Jones. Oxford Early Christian Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 320 pp. $105.00 cloth.

Gregory of Nyssa's Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts. By Ann Conway-Jones. Oxford Early Christian Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 320 pp. $105.00 cloth.

Historicizing Christianity and Profiat Duran’s Kelimat ha-Goyim (1397)

This study of the Hebrew treatise Kelimat ha-Goyim (“Shame of the Gentiles,” 1397) by Profiat Duran exemplifies the stimulating impact medieval religious polemics exerted on the scholarly construction of Christian religious history. Besides explaining Jesus in his Jewish context, this Catalan author outlined in detail the emergence of the fundamental Christian dogmas during the apostolic, patristic, and medieval age and searched for the driving forces behind long-term religious transformation. While a common view holds that Duran’s method of New Testament study mirrored thirteenth-century Christian Talmudism, I underscore his originality as a historian of religion, whose clandestinely transmitted text still inspired early modern and nineteenth century attempts at critical scholarship. Duran’s proper context is the contemporary converso problem. A comparison with a Spanish Renaissance text, the Diálogos en Marruecos, strongly suggests that his historical representation of ex-Jews turned into Christian leaders not only addressed conversos, but actually meant to caricature them.

Right-Skilling: Rabbis and the Rabbinic Role for a New Century

This chapter applies Clayton Christensen's model of organizational innovation to Jewish contexts. It observes a parallel between the many challenges that currently confront U.S. healthcare and American Jewry: a mismatch in the skills acquired by professionals and the needs expressed by the broader public; expensive institutions with high fixed costs that are struggling to provide value and maintain sustainable revenues; a failure to respect individual autonomy and cultural mores; and a disenfranchised public that suffers from high costs and unmet demand for meaningful services. It then applies Christensen's adapted model for the healthcare sector to American Jewish institutions, suggesting reforms and articulating a vision of Jewish institutional change.

Exposing Yiddish Paris: the Modern Jewish Culture pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair

ABSTRACTDuring the 1930s, Paris was home to approximately two million immigrants. Around 150,000 of these were Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe who used Paris as the basis for a new Western European influenced Yiddishism and Diaspora Nationalism. This paper traces the high point of that interwar Parisian Yiddish internationalist cultural development, the Modern Jewish Culture pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair. Through an analysis that places the pavilion within its immigrant Jewish and interwar Popular Front Parisian contexts, this article argues that the Modern Jewish Culture pavilion represented the culmination of decades of leftist cultural work in Paris. The Modern Jewish Culture pavilion highlighted both universal and particular aspects of Yiddish culture and placed them on display in the most international way possible. Buttressed by the rise in European fascism, antisemitism, and antifascism, Yiddish culture-makers in Paris created a cultural display that presented a sophisticated, global, pan-leftist Yiddish culture that spoke to Jews and non-Jews around the world in an attempt to preserve the burgeoning global Yiddish culture and stave off fascism.

Ann Conway-Jones, Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts

Ann Conway-Jones, Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts

Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts.By Ann Conway-Jones.

<i>Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts.</i>By Ann Conway-Jones.

Ann Conway-Jones: Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts

Ann Conway-Jones: Gregory of Nyssa’s Tabernacle Imagery in its Jewish and Christian Contexts